As a photographer, Victor Arimondi was a rarity in that there were more pictures of him out there than pictures by him.

The late Arimondi was an Italian fashion model before he came to San Francisco in the early 1980s and started working the other side of the camera. He shot commercially for the slicks and he shot documentary on the streets, and those two styles intersected when he recognized cover girl Ivy Nicholson living the low life in the Tenderloin.

Arimondi, who had known Nicholson from the Paris runways, got her cleaned and fed her. Then he filled out her hollow, toothless cheeks with tissue and photographed her for several months in the studio of his Potrero Hill home. That body of work was in process when Arimondi died in 2001, with negatives still drying in his darkroom, three months after learning he was HIV-positive.

"It was like he was hit by a car," says Donald Hershman, Arimondi's partner. He was 58, and following a flurry of obituary-style gallery shows, Arimondi's photography was pulled from circulation by Hershman, 55, a San Francisco podiatrist.

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"I didn't just want to sell his work," he says. "I wanted a legacy."

Eight years later, that legacy is coming to light. "A Compassionate Eye: The Work of Victor Arimondi" has been extended through Jan. 7 at the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center, Main Library in San Francisco. The overview highlights a series of portraits of 55 gay men who posed for Arimondi when they were healthy, before they all took sick and died, as did Arimondi. There are also three pictures of Nicholson, who is alive, and another four will go on display at SF Camerawork as part of a group show entitled "Autobiography of the San Francisco Bay Area, Part 2: the Future Lasts Forever" .

"Here she was homeless and living on the streets of San Francisco and she had been a famous model, on the cover of Vogue, and had been in, like eight Andy Warhol films" says Chuck Mobley, curator of SF Camerawork. Nicholson was also on the covers of Mademoiselle and Bazaar, and was depicted in the film "Andy Warhol's Factory People." "I thought it was an interesting story" Mobley says. Shot in black-and-white, the prints were colorized by Arimondi.

The four Nicholson images he chose were from nine prints sent to him by Adam Stoltman, a New York photographer and photo editor who was hired by Hershman to organize Arimondi's catalog of more than 3,000 items - photographs, collages, albums and Polaroids. Major themes were portraiture, fashion and the homeless; and the Nicholson pictures seem to fit all three.

"What fascinated Victor is how life can turn on you," says Hershman, who was there when Arimondi brought Nicholson home. "You have a high-glamour life and the depravity that can result from that lifestyle. It was not a very happy existence."

When they met, Arimondi had just closed his photo gallery on Haight Street. "He was a little depressed, doing drugs and drinking," Hershman says. "I straightened him out." Arimondi was still in demand as a model, and went back to work, earning enough for the down payment on the house that Hershman still owns. In return, Hershman cut Arimondi loose from commercial work to focus on his art.